Every Night I Save You
by Helga Von Nutwimple
Summary: AU Season Six. After Spike jumps off Glory's tower to save her, a mourning Dawn uncovers a mystery. INCOMPLETE.
1. The Disdain And Calmness of Martyrs

Spike's eyes greedily trace Doc's flight as the little man plummets off the tower, limbs flailing as he falls... and it's sweet, so sweet, a pure Soprano aria of terror, it's even better than he has dreamt it.  
  
Doc screams like a little bitch.  
  
God, how Spike had hoped he would scream like a little bitch.  
  
"I _told_ you," Spike nearly purrs in satisfaction, "You don't come near the girl."  
  
And Spike smiles.  
  
There in joy in that smile, and relief, and insanity.  
  
"Spike," Dawn whimpers.  
  
"Let's get you untied, Bit." His fingers are on the ropes that bind her, loosening knots.  
  
"Spike... it's too late. It's already started..."  
  
He looks. Beneath Dawn's feet, bright light has begun to spread, like ripples on a pond.  
  
"Spike, I know about the ritual. I have to stop it. I have to jump."  
  
"Like hell you do," Spike growls, still working at the knots.  
  
"It's my blood, Spike! It has to be my blood! The blood starts it, and until the blood stops flowing, it will never stop..."  
  
Spike smiles at her, something tender in his eyes. He brushes a piece of hair back from her face. "Bit, I don't lie to you, right? This is gonna hurt."  
  
And he vamps out, his teeth sinking into her neck, and Dawn stiffens but does not scream. A few moments later, he lifts his head; human again, his lips red with her blood, his face contorted with pain from the chip.  
  
"I love you, Bit," he whispers. "Till the end of the world."  
  
Realization and horror break across Dawn's face.  
  
Now, she screams.  
  
And he runs past her, leaping, disappearing into the pool of light.  
  
He has never looked so happy.  
  
------------------------------------------  
  
Buffy runs towards the tower, her eyes wide with fear. The ritual has already begun, the light spreading out... she took too long, she is too late, cursing herself for every second spent taunting Glory, every second wasted. She cranes her neck to see Dawn, looking up through...  
  
She blinks; once, twice. There's something in her eye, it's...  
  
It's raining dust.  
  
Buffy shields her eyes with her hand and gasps; the portal is closing, folding back in on itself. Oh God, that can only mean...  
  
But then she sees her... Dawn, half-running, half-falling down the stairs, sobbing and clutching her stomach but alive and whole and Buffy runs, crushing Dawn to her, running her hands over her face, reassuring herself that she is real, real and here and still alive...  
  
"Spike!" Dawn is hysterical, hyperventilating. "Spike..."  
  
And the dust is still falling, sparkling in the moonlight, making the world glitter around them.  
  
The other five straggle towards them, surrounding them, bloodied and confused.  
  
"What the hell happened?" Xander asks.  
  
Dawn reaches out, lets pieces of sparkling dust fall on her palm. "Spike happened."  
  
Buffy looks around her at the falling sparkles, her eyes growing wide.  
  
They turn the rickety tower into a fairyland.  
  
They are effulgent. 


	2. The Large Hearts of Heroes

Dawn locks the bathroom door behind her and pulls the dress over her head, setting it aside gingerly.  
  
She stands in her underwear, facing the mirror, looking at the shallow cuts that lace her stomach. She is, like the rest of them, covered in dust.  
  
Covered in Spike.  
  
YADSEUT, her underwear says in the mirror, and she is seized then by the dissonance in it, the contrast between worlds. The bright one she inhabits, with day-of-the-week underwear and Hot Pockets and infomercials and the critical, crucial importance of eliminating static cling, Janice's giggles about Doing It and the quadratic formula. The dark one her sister patrols, full of demons and bloodlust and madness and the snap of bone, the dust that is all that remains of potential immortality.  
  
And Spike -- Spike who loved the brightness just as much as the darkness, loved with savage glee. Blood and gore and death and chicken wings and Passions and little marshmallows, rage and love and sweetness and perversion.  
  
_Do I contradict myself?  
Very well then, I contradict myself,  
I am large and contain multitudes.  
  
_How Spike would smirk to learn that she'd firmly associated him with Whitman in her mind, that she couldn't hear the phrase 'sound my barbaric yawp' without imagining Spike, the duster whirling around him, his face transformed with the purity of violence.  
  
He'd read the poem to her one night; she'd come over from school bitching about English class, stupid poetry, stupid poets who never said what they freakin' meant, too many words to say one simple thing...  
  
He'd yanked her textbook out of her hands, sent her sprawling into the comfy chair with one hand.  
  
_Close your eyes and bloody well shut up, Nibblet.  
  
_And he'd begun to read... his voice low and rough and evocative, warming her, filling her head... like listening to dark chocolate, or drowning in it.  
  
And from his lips, the words made sense, caught beauty, painted pictures... and there _weren't_ too many words, there were just enough words, spare and gorgeous, and the poem was about him and about her and about everything.  
  
She'd been gasping when he finished.  
  
So she'd read the words at school, hearing his voice. So she'd bring the book to his crypt when school let out, thrusting it at him.  
  
_Please?  
  
_And he always would. Auden, Donne, Browning, Millay... he resurrected them for her as she sat, eyes closed, lost in a world created by the echo of his voice against the stone.  
  
He was large. He contained multitudes. Poetry-reading guy, with the black magic voice. Dru's solicitous nursemaid and dark prince. The Big Bad. The clumsy, awkward suitor to Buffy, with his oh-so-sad little bent box of chocolates. The magician who could read your innermost thoughts with a glance. The clueless fool who'd really thought he could win Buffy with Drusilla tactics. The idiot who'd honestly believed he could exorcise her with that stupid robot. The swaggering, blustering badass. The deadly swirl of black that spelled death for all who crossed him. The relentless killer. The incredibly sensitive guy, who wounded at a word. Snark Boy, throwing ugly truths in everyone's face.  
  
He'd wanted everyone to love him or hate him. Anything but ignore him, anything but apathy. He'd wanted to be _seen_.

How could she not love him? He was everyone.  
  
She presses her palms together, feels the grit between them. All that's left of him, now. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.  
  
She should shower, but it seems obscene. Wash Spike _off_, like he was filth?  
  
She's felt this way before, this gorge rising in her throat, this sense of unholiness, of the complete inadequacy of... everything.  
  
She felt this way at Mom's visitation, that horrible open casket, the huge bouquets of flowers making the air thick and rank and perfumed, the people milling about, some of whom she hadn't known, many of them with their eyes bright and hungry, like it was a social event, and then the funeral director in his tight blue suit, so pleased with his _work_, accepting congratulations on what a nice _job_ he'd done.  
  
And the meaningless words, words flying all around her.

_Oh, doesn't she look lovely._

_And who sent _those_ flowers?_  
  
_She's with Jesus now.  
  
Her suffering is over.  
  
It was her time.  
  
_And she'd wanted to punch them, destroy them, rip off their smiles and make them eat their own teeth, make them understand what pain really was, make them _feel_, tear into that blank fakeness until it was replaced with something real, with _agony_.

Agony would have been worthy.

Anything else was sacrilege.  
  
The minister's words, flattering and empty. He hadn't known Mom. The saintlike woman he described wasn't Mom. Mom got angry and swore when she thought she couldn't be heard and broke dishes when she got upset.  
  
She used to sit at the bottom of the stairs on the nights Spike came over, those nights when Buffy was off at college and Mom had been so fluttery over her half an empty nest.  
  
And oh, the things she'd learned about Mom from eavesdropping on those conversations, things that made her stomach roll and her eyes widen, things that made her realize, with a funny little start, that her Mom was --_ real_. She'd been a child, a teenager, a young woman painfully in love with Dad and... _shockhorror_... guys before Dad... and after.  
  
She'd hear Mom laughing, a completely different sound than her normal laugh, freer and wilder and kinda _naughty_, and it had been horrifying and reassuring at the same time, this confirmation that you didn't _end_ when you became a grown-up.  
  
But Mom was dead.  
  
And so was Spike.  
  
And those memories were _fake_.  
  
She raises her hand, trails her fingers down the two puncture wounds at her throat. She and Buffy match now.  
  
She hopes it scars.  
  
She gets the hydrogen peroxide, watches dispassionately as her cuts bubble and froth. He's gone. He's dust. There is no more Spike.  
  
And she is the only one who mourns him.  
  
She wraps her stomach in gauze; this is a Slayer's house, never short on first-aid supplies. When she is satisfied, she gathers up the dress in her arms, crossing the hall.  
  
She can hear them down in the living room, celebrating. Of course they're celebrating. Everyone _they_ cared about survived.  
  
Xander probably considers this killing two birds with one stone.  
  
Dawn feels a flush of red-hot hatred surge through her.  
  
She hears them laughing downstairs, and it turns white, scorching her.  
  
Back in her room, she pulls her comforter and topsheet all the way down to the foot of the bed. Dawn lifts the dress, shaking it, watching as the precious motes of dust fall into the center of the mattress, the white sheet turning gray. She shakes until nothing else falls, then hurls the dress aside.  
  
And she crawls into her bed, covered in dust, lying in his dust, as close to him as she can be. She pulls the blanket up, traps him in with her.  
  
"I'm not going to forget you, Spike," she whispers. "Till the end of the world."


	3. Eulogies

He never locked his door.  
  
She guesses you don't have to, when you're the Big Bad.  
  
The crypt smells... empty. Wrong. He had a way of filling a space, putting his mark on things. This place is... echo-ey. It's all wrong.  
  
She'd gone to Anya; she'd suspected Anya was the one to ask, being an ex-demon and all. Sure enough, Anya had nodded, agreed to keep her silence, sold her what she needed.  
  
Dawn isn't completely positive, but she thinks she saw Anya hit the "discount" button on the register as she rang it up.  
  
A nanosecond's worth of eulogy, but from Anya, it is epic.  
  
So she sets out her herbs, and reads the words of the incantation. Pale light glows from the doorway of the crypt, more from the lower level, and Dawn smiles, closing her eyes.  
  
No one will ever come in here again.  
  
No one but her.  
  
He's hers.  
  
Till the end of the world.  
  
It's not hard to find what she's looking for. Dawn shucks her clothing, folding it neatly, stacking it on the edge of the sarcophagus. She pulls one of his black t-shirts over her head, steps into a pair of his jeans. They hang absurdly, and she has to use a notch on his belt that's never been used before, but it doesn't matter... she is surrounded by him. This is of the good.  
  
She almost laughs, looking down at her bare feet peeking out from beneath the hem of his jeans. He wasn't that tall; she'd never noticed. He just... _seemed_ tall.  
  
She moves around the crypt, slowly, like she's dancing. The carton of cigarettes is on top of the refrigerator. His zippo must have gone with him, but she finds a pack of matches near a group of candles. She finds the bottle of fingernail polish not far away.  
  
She sets her items on top of the tomb reverently.  
  
One more thing. She crosses to the small CD player, pushes play.  
  
_A cheap holiday in other peoples misery!  
I don't wanna holiday in the sun  
I wanna go to new Belsen  
I wanna see some history  
'Cause now I got a reasonable economy..._

She hops up on the edge of the tomb, straddling it, like he used to.  
  
_"I'm not even human. Not originally."  
  
"Yeah, well, originally I was. I got over it."  
  
_She gets the match lit on the third try, pulls the smoke into her lungs. It burns the back of her tongue, but she only coughs a little.  
  
Spike smokes Marlboro Reds; she's heard the kids at school talk about them like they were something really scary and tough. They're the worst, the strongest, the most addictive; not that it mattered to Spike, she guesses. These are _boy_ cigarettes; the girls at school who smoke buy those ultra light ones, the longer ones.  
  
Wow, her head is really swimming. This is kind of nice.  
  
She unscrews the lid of the jar of blood, takes an experimental sniff, then a sip. It's not so bad. He's right, though; it's kinda gross cold. She bets it'd be much better warm, like really rare steak.  
  
She hopes she tasted good, when he drank her. She hopes he had that much.  
  
She tries the whiskey next, makes a horrible face; even the blood tasted better than _that_.  
  
She paints her fingernails slowly, methodically. She sprays herself with his cologne. She smokes cigarette after cigarette, but she puts the blood and whiskey back in the refrigerator, swapping them for one of the juice boxes he keeps here for her.  
  
She lays down on the cold stone, tries to imagine what it would be like to not have to breathe, to not have your heart beat. The Sex Pistols ends, and she puts in the Ramones.  
  
"He died for me," she says out loud, experimentally. It bounces around the crypt.  
  
"He could have lived forever, but he died for me. He loved me that much."

* * *

The next night, Angel comes.  
  
He's drunk and sobbing, and Dawn watches him for a while in utter shock; she thought Angel hated Spike.  
  
He tries to get in, pounds on the door in frustration, then sinks down against it. He calls him _Willy _and_ my boy_, his voice all choked up with tears and Irish accent; he rambles about Drusilla, Darla, European cities, tells stories about someplace called pie-lee-ya and someone named Fred, who is, apparently, a girl.  
  
"Handsome man saved me from the monsters," he whispers, more than once. It sounds like the words cut him inside.  
  
When she can't take any more, she uses the sewer exit and goes around. His eyes when he sees her are large and black and shiny and dead.  
  
"I'm only about nine months old, you know," Dawn says, in lieu of hello. "He was the only person who ever liked me just 'cause he wanted to and not because a bunch of stupid monks made him do it."  
  
"You were his friend?" Angel asks softly.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"He wanted that so badly," Angel whispers. "Someone to see him. I'm glad he got it."  
  
"I thought you didn't like him."  
  
"He was Angelus' greatest frustration," Angel laughs bitterly. "Drusilla's revenge. I might have loved him."  
  
"He died for me," Dawn adds.  
  
"Yeah," Angel sighs. "He would have."

* * *

She doesn't smoke the cigarettes anymore; they make her throat hurt, make her lungs feel tight and funny. She just lights one and lets it burn in the ashtray, lets it fill the crypt, make it smell right.  
  
This is part of her ritual. The burning of the cigarette. One spritz of his cologne into the air. Splashing whiskey in the corners. The music that is slowly starting to grow on her.  
  
It's all about ambiance.  
  
Then she sits in his comfy chair, turns the telly on. School lets out too late for _Passions_, but the senseless rumble of daytime television works just fine. She does her homework there, keeping her eyes on her paper. If she never looks up, she can never ruin the illusion that he's standing a few feet away, pretending to watch Dr. Phil but really watching her, his head tilted to the side, trying to suss her out.  
  
One afternoon, Buffy comes. When she finds the door is locked, she wrenches it open.  
  
It gives Dawn time to hide behind the sarcophagus, having to stifle a giggle behind one hand when Buffy smacks face-first into the invisible barrier.  
  
_How's it feel, bitch?  
_  
"Spike?" Buffy asks, hesitantly. "Spike, i-is that you?"  
  
Dawn knows how confused Buffy must be; Dawn has worked hard to craft the illusion of Spike in this place.  
  
"Spike... I come here every night, and I... I know you're here, I can tell. Can I come in?"  
  
Buffy waits, taps the barrier with her knuckles, sighs. "Okay... I, uh, okay. Look, I... I guess you're a ghost, or something. I hope you can hear me. I wanted to thank you. For what you did."  
  
Dawn hears her sister's voice crack, and a thrill of shock flares down her spine.  
  
"You were wrong. I never treated you like a man. But Spike -- no monster would do what you did. I hope you can hear me... I don't know if you can see me..."  
  
A deep breath. "I still have your ring, Spike. I kept it. I figured hey, Slayer, short shelf life, might be the only proposal I ever get, right? And... I'm wearing it, Spike. On a chain, 'cause hello, majorly ugly. But I'm wearing it. To remember."  
  
Buffy pauses, her hand running over the barrier, almost a caress.  
  
"I'm sorry I always went for the nose."  
  
And she is gone.


	4. Conversations With Dead People

"We're _worried_ about you, Dawnie," Willow says kindly, and Tara squeezes Willow's hand; like _Willow_ needs strength or something, when _Willow's_ not the one surrounded by people staring at her. "This... this weird... obsession with Spike. It can't be healthy."

"The loss of your mother, followed by the loss of a... _close friend_," Giles adds, wincing at the concept of Spike befriending anyone. "We were thinking you might benefit from some... grief counseling."

"You want to send me to a _shrink_," Dawn mutters, crossing her arms. "Thanks a whole bunch of really not at all."

"Dawnie, Spike wouldn't want you to be like this," Tara soothes. "He wanted you to _live_. This... isn't living."

Xander doesn't say a word; Dawn gets the distinct impression he's been threatened with bodily harm if he does.

"I'm sorry for caring that my friend died," Dawn drawls. "I'll try to keep the noise down."

"It's not the _noise_, Dawn," Buffy insists. "It's just... spending every afternoon in his crypt?"

"I _like_ his crypt. It's quiet, I can get my homework done, there's a TV and books and a fridge and stuff. You wouldn't be all freaked out if I spent every afternoon in a treehouse or something, what's the diff?"

"A _treehouse_ is not _a place to store dead people_ in a _cemetery_."

"Look, Dawn," Xander finally blurts. "We know about Spike's ghost, and it's just plain creepy."

"Spike's _what_?"

"_Don't_, Dawn," Buffy warns. "We _know_, okay? And that's what we really wanted to talk to you about. It's time to let Spike go."

"What do you mean?"

"We're going to exorcise him, Dawn," Willow explains. "Give him peace. Let him leave the mortal plane."

"You're kidding, right?"

"It's not fair to him, Dawnie," Tara smiles. "He needs to be set free."

Suspicion flares to life in Dawn's eyes. "Why are you guys talking to me about this? You _never_ talk to me about Scooby stuff..."

"You're the only one he'll let into the crypt, Dawnie," Willow says. "And the crypt seems to be the focus of the haunting. You'll have to do the spell."

"You guys, there _is no ghost_..." 

"If there is no ghost," Anya catches Dawn's eye in a meaningful way, "Then there's no harm in doing the spell, right?"

Dawn sighs heavily.

-

"Are we having a picnic?" Dawn asks sullenly, eyeing the small pile of supplies at the crypt door.

"The salt is to draw the circle," Willow explains. "The bowl of water... well, tupperware container of water... that's to see Spike in. The four white candles go at the points of the circle, okay? And the black one in the center, with you. That's to banish him."

"_Banish_?" Dawn's eyes narrow.

"_Free_," Tara corrects with a smile. "Free."

"Can we get on with it?" Anya's boredom is palpable.

"Fine," Dawn snaps, snatching the Tupperware. "Let's get this over with."

She slams into the crypt, pours the salt in a haphazard circle, jams the candles down with an irreverence that causes both Tara and Willow to flinch. She fights with the book of matches, finally getting one to burn; candles lit, she plops gracelessly into the center of the circle, parchment in hand.

"Oh, Goddess," Dawn reads with every ounce of teenage surly she can muster, laying the neatly tied bundles of herbs down at the compass points. "Grant me the sight to see into other worlds. Grant me the..."

"Is she supposed to be glowing green like that?" Xander stage-whispers from the doorway.

"... wisdom to guide this lost spirit..."

"Um... it didn't say anything in the _book_ about her glowing green..."

"... out of this world and into... "

"She's probably doing some freaky Key thing," Anya sighs. "I told you this was a horrible idea."

"Dawn, stop!" Xander yells. "C'mon, stop!"

"Spike?" Dawn whispers in shock.

But she's not looking into the bowl; she's looking up and across the room, her eyes following an invisible figure from the ladder towards the television.

"Oh, _crap_," Anya says with feeling.

"Anybody else mondo-freaked?" Xander breathes.

"No, I... what do you mean?" Dawn asks the air. "You're dead."

The answer makes her grin in spite of herself. "More dead. I'm supposed to be exorcising you and stuff... like Beetlejuice, not Jane Fonda."

"Buffy and everybody's _making_ me," Dawn answers after a long pause. "No, not the Buffybot, _Buffy_. The Buffybot got all smooshed by Glory."

Another pause; Dawn's eyebrows soar. "No, she's _not_."

Beat. "No, she _didn't_. _You_ did. _You're_ the one who jumped... you bit me and got my blood in you and then jumped off the... _Spike_? Spike, don't... don't _cry_, geez... what do you mean, it worked? _What_ worked? _Spike_!"

Dawn stumbles to her feet, reaching out for him... and the Scoobies gasp as her hand passes the limits of the circle and disappears.

"Will, make it _stop_," Xander pleads. "Make the spell... over or whatever you do."

"Huh?" Willow is still staring at the circle in fascination, watching as more and more of Dawn's arm vanishes.

"_Will_... Dawn, rapidly disappearing, hello? Depressy, obsessed little hormone bomb about to jump into the spirit world to be with Captain Peroxide and probably never coming back?"

Willow's eyes fly wide, and she waves her hand in a semi-circle. "Let the spell be ended."

Wind rushes through the crypt, whipping Dawn's hair around her face, and she lets out a strangled cry of disappointment as her fist reappears.

"What did you _do_?" she shrieks in fury, turning to the doorway. "What the _fuck_ did you just do?"

"Dawnie, sweetie..." Willow tries.

"Get more stuff," Dawn says, her voice low and dangerous. "Get more stuff,_ right now,_ I'm doing the spell over."

"Dawn..."

"I could have gotten him _back_!"

"Dawn... we've been _over_ this," Buffy crosses her arms. "You can't bring back dead people. Now come out of there, we're going home."

"I hate you guys. I _hate_ you guys! You don't _want_ him back!"

"Dawnie, of _course_ we want him back..."

"_I_ don't," Xander protested.

"Okay, Xander doesn't," Willow sighed. "But the rest of us do. Just... come out of there, okay?"

Dawn stalks towards the door of the crypt. "I want to do the spell over."

"Sweetie, we _can't_," Tara insists. "We don't have any more herbs, and..."

"Tomorrow? Can we do the spell over tomorrow?"

"Maybe... maybe you _shouldn't_. Whatever you did... that was _dangerous_, and Spike's ghost..."

"He's. _Not._ A. _Ghost_."

"I don't care _what_ he is," Xander proclaims. "He's not worth you getting hurt. Now come out of there, Dawn."

Dawn gets in his face. "_I could have gotten him back._"

"No, you _couldn't_," Buffy grabs Dawn's protruding elbow, pulling her the rest of the way out of the doorway. "And we're _going home_."

Dawn wrenches her elbow free from Buffy's grip, stumbling backwards... and Buffy yelps in surprised pain as Dawn turns on her heel and runs towards the cemetery exit.

"Were _we_ that annoying at that age?" Xander marvels, sighing in resignation. "I'll go get her."

Xander lopes off after Dawn, and Tara examines Buffy's face in concern. "What did she do to you?"

"Threw something at me," Buffy rubs her forehead, wincing. "It bounced off or something."

Anya kneels by Buffy's feet, running her hands through the damp grass. "Um. Buffy?"

"Yeah?"

"That... _thing_ Dawn hit you with. Small, rectangular, metallic?"

"Sounds about right..."

And Anya stands, moving between them and opening her palm...

Where Spike's Zippo gleams in the moonlight.


End file.
